Posts
the world's funniest joke
I actually laughed out loud when I read this, and immediately afterwards thought: That joke's pretty dumb.
The fact is, though, that I didn't see the punchline coming, and I laughed.
Humor depends on surprise.
Eureka
Eureka, part 2
Eureka, part 3
Eureka, part 4
Eureka, part 5
Flipping the Classroom: Hot, Hot, Hot
MOOCs grow the gap
The New York Times is surprised
In the world of MOOCs, 2+2 is never 4
World's funniest joke: humor depends on surprise
Dick Van Dyke on comedy
Philip Keller on the flipped classroom
If students could talk
Who wants flipped classrooms? (Salman Khan on liberating teachers)
True story
Are math & science lectures boring in a way humanities & social science lectures are not?
Saturday, December 14, 2013
Eureka, part 3: MOOCs and flips and dopamine
Eureka
Eureka, part 2
Eureka, part 3
Eureka, part 4
Eureka, part 5
So, MOOCs. Why don't they work (setting aside, for the moment, Anne D's experience)?
I had just gotten to the point where sitcoms gave me the answer I was looking for when I had to take a train to the city.
So, to reprise:
"Reward prediction error"
In graduate school (I have a Ph.D. in film studies) I was intensely interested in comedy; I wrote my dissertation on 1950s comedies. 1950s comedies are fabulous, but what I really wanted to know was: what is humor?
What makes things funny?
I've wondered about that for my entire adult life, and have probably, finally, found at least a partial answer, which has to do with -- hold your breath -- the basal ganglia. (For passersby, I have been slaving over a basal ganglia writing project for years now.)
Research on the basal ganglia is very new, so take what I'm about to describe as provisional.
The basal ganglia seem to be all about reward prediction error.
"Reward prediction error" means that learning happens when you predict a reward and you are wrong.
Here's how it works. (Or may work).
Dopamine spikes or drops in response to "prediction" errors, that is to mistakes we make predicting rewards.
(I've learned just this week that "because" has become a preposition.)
So, if you're expecting a check to come in the mail and the check comes in the mail, no dopamine spike. You open the check, you're mildly happy (if that), you deposit the check. Life goes on.
If you're not expecting a check to come in the mail and a check in the exact same amount as the expected check-in-the-mail arrives without warning, that feels great because dopamine.
A surprise check in the mail feels great because dopamine fires in response to good surprises (or to "better-than-expected" rewards.)
Reinforcement learning
Reward prediction error is the basis of reinforcement learning.
It's unfortunate that "reinforcement learning" is called "reinforcement learning," because "reinforcement," to me, sounds as if learning takes place when the same thing happens again.
Instead, reinforcement learning takes place when something new happens, something you didn't expect.
("Something new" includes something old but better -- or worse -- than you expected. I know the whole thing gets incredibly confusing right around this point, but just remember the surprise check in the mail: how different it feels from the fully anticipated check in the mail. The surprise check in the mail produces reinforcement learning; the expected check in the mail does not.)
For the record, I don't know how learning via distributed practice, via repetition, relates to reinforcement learning, so that question will have to remain a mystery for the time being.
Reinforcement learning in the sense of the incidental learning we do naturally throughout the day (what should I do again? what should I not do again?) depends on mistakes. "Reinforcement learning" happens when we are wrong, when we are wrong in a very specific way: reinforcement learning happens when we are wrong about the goodness or badness of what comes next.
Drug addiction is probably a phenomenon of reward prediction error, btw.
Normally we habituate to good things. We get used to them; we no longer feel ecstatic when they occur. But addictive drugs always spike dopamine -- that is their effect inside the brain -- and that is what makes them addictive.
Cocaine spikes dopamine every time you use it, so your brain is always getting a 'REMEMBER THIS AND DO IT AGAIN' message, and your interest in taking cocaine always increases. Addiction is a form of learning, a form of overlearning, more exactly.
At least, that is the way I understand the reward prediction error theory of drug addition, as a "disease of learning and memory."
(Interesting 2012 research here…dopamine and GABA…)
Surprise is good
The long and the short of it: surprise is good.
Good surprise is good.
Bad surprise is bad.
All surprise, however, appears to be informational. Our brains react strongly, and we learn.
Which brings me to sitcoms.
Why are funny things funny?
Funny things are funny, at least in part, because humor -- humor that works -- is surprising. If it's not surprising, it's not funny.
And that means humor tells your brain you've made a reward prediction error. The punchline of a good joke or gag is unexpected, so dopamine spikes up. Dopamine spikes feel good, so we come back for more.
A good sitcom doesn't need an immersive setting or loud music or arresting imagery to hold our attention.
A good sitcom sets the reward prediction errors coming one on the heels of another, and that is plenty.
Eureka, Part 4 t/k
Flipping the Classroom: Hot, Hot, Hot
MOOCs grow the gap
The New York Times is surprised
In the world of MOOCs, 2+2 is never 4
World's funniest joke: humor depends on surprise
Dick Van Dyke on comedy
Philip Keller on the flipped classroom
If students could talk
Who wants flipped classrooms? (Salman Khan on liberating teachers)
True story
Are math & science lectures boring in a way humanities & social science lectures are not?
Eureka, part 2
Eureka, part 3
Eureka, part 4
Eureka, part 5
So, MOOCs. Why don't they work (setting aside, for the moment, Anne D's experience)?
I had just gotten to the point where sitcoms gave me the answer I was looking for when I had to take a train to the city.
So, to reprise:
Ed brought up movies.
When you go to the movies, he said, the screen is huge, the sound is deafening, all the lights are turned off, you can't talk to your friends, and you have to stow your cell phone. Plus a movie lasts only a couple of hours, then you never have to see it again unless there's a sequel that you really want to see, and you don't have to see that for at least a year.
And even at the movies, even with all the ploys and devices filmmakers and theater designers have developed to hold your attention, if the plot sags, your mind wanders.
MOOCs don't have any of those things, so good luck. The wonder of it all is not that the drop-out rate for MOOCs is catastrophic, but that anyone thought they were a good idea in the first place.
Ed continued.
TV, he said, had had to follow in the footsteps of movies. TVs are bigger, the sound is louder, the experience more immersive….
That's not really true, I said. It's definitely not true of sitcoms. Sitcoms are the exact same hokey, flat-lit, 3-camera affair they always were, with the laugh track telling you when to laugh, and they work. They always have.
That's when it hit me.
"Reward prediction error"
In graduate school (I have a Ph.D. in film studies) I was intensely interested in comedy; I wrote my dissertation on 1950s comedies. 1950s comedies are fabulous, but what I really wanted to know was: what is humor?
What makes things funny?
I've wondered about that for my entire adult life, and have probably, finally, found at least a partial answer, which has to do with -- hold your breath -- the basal ganglia. (For passersby, I have been slaving over a basal ganglia writing project for years now.)
Research on the basal ganglia is very new, so take what I'm about to describe as provisional.
The basal ganglia seem to be all about reward prediction error.
"Reward prediction error" means that learning happens when you predict a reward and you are wrong.
Here's how it works. (Or may work).
Dopamine spikes or drops in response to "prediction" errors, that is to mistakes we make predicting rewards.
- If you expect something good to happen & it doesn't, dopamine drops. That feels bad.
- If you expect something bad to happen and it doesn't, dopamine spikes. That feels good.
- If you're not expecting anything good to happen one way or another, and all of a sudden, out of the blue, something good does happen, that feels great. Because dopamine.
(I've learned just this week that "because" has become a preposition.)
So, if you're expecting a check to come in the mail and the check comes in the mail, no dopamine spike. You open the check, you're mildly happy (if that), you deposit the check. Life goes on.
If you're not expecting a check to come in the mail and a check in the exact same amount as the expected check-in-the-mail arrives without warning, that feels great because dopamine.
A surprise check in the mail feels great because dopamine fires in response to good surprises (or to "better-than-expected" rewards.)
Reinforcement learning
Reward prediction error is the basis of reinforcement learning.
It's unfortunate that "reinforcement learning" is called "reinforcement learning," because "reinforcement," to me, sounds as if learning takes place when the same thing happens again.
Instead, reinforcement learning takes place when something new happens, something you didn't expect.
("Something new" includes something old but better -- or worse -- than you expected. I know the whole thing gets incredibly confusing right around this point, but just remember the surprise check in the mail: how different it feels from the fully anticipated check in the mail. The surprise check in the mail produces reinforcement learning; the expected check in the mail does not.)
For the record, I don't know how learning via distributed practice, via repetition, relates to reinforcement learning, so that question will have to remain a mystery for the time being.
Reinforcement learning in the sense of the incidental learning we do naturally throughout the day (what should I do again? what should I not do again?) depends on mistakes. "Reinforcement learning" happens when we are wrong, when we are wrong in a very specific way: reinforcement learning happens when we are wrong about the goodness or badness of what comes next.
Drug addiction is probably a phenomenon of reward prediction error, btw.
Normally we habituate to good things. We get used to them; we no longer feel ecstatic when they occur. But addictive drugs always spike dopamine -- that is their effect inside the brain -- and that is what makes them addictive.
Cocaine spikes dopamine every time you use it, so your brain is always getting a 'REMEMBER THIS AND DO IT AGAIN' message, and your interest in taking cocaine always increases. Addiction is a form of learning, a form of overlearning, more exactly.
At least, that is the way I understand the reward prediction error theory of drug addition, as a "disease of learning and memory."
(Interesting 2012 research here…dopamine and GABA…)
Surprise is good
The long and the short of it: surprise is good.
Good surprise is good.
Bad surprise is bad.
All surprise, however, appears to be informational. Our brains react strongly, and we learn.
Which brings me to sitcoms.
Why are funny things funny?
Funny things are funny, at least in part, because humor -- humor that works -- is surprising. If it's not surprising, it's not funny.
And that means humor tells your brain you've made a reward prediction error. The punchline of a good joke or gag is unexpected, so dopamine spikes up. Dopamine spikes feel good, so we come back for more.
A good sitcom doesn't need an immersive setting or loud music or arresting imagery to hold our attention.
A good sitcom sets the reward prediction errors coming one on the heels of another, and that is plenty.
Eureka, Part 4 t/k
Flipping the Classroom: Hot, Hot, Hot
MOOCs grow the gap
The New York Times is surprised
In the world of MOOCs, 2+2 is never 4
World's funniest joke: humor depends on surprise
Dick Van Dyke on comedy
Philip Keller on the flipped classroom
If students could talk
Who wants flipped classrooms? (Salman Khan on liberating teachers)
True story
Are math & science lectures boring in a way humanities & social science lectures are not?
Woodrow Wilson on fathers, sons, and universities
I am interested in [this organization - the YMCA] for various reasons. First of all, because it is an association of young men. I have had a good deal to do with young men in my time, and I have formed an impression of them which I believe to be contrary to the general impression. They are generally thought to be arch radicals. As a matter of fact, they are the most conservative people I have ever dealt with. Go to a college community and try to change the least custom of that little world and find how the conservatives will rush at you. Moreover, young men are embarrassed by having inherited their father’s opinions. I have often said that the use of a university is to make young gentlemen as unlike their fathers as possible. I do not say that with the least disrespect for the fathers; but every man who is old enough to have a son in college is old enough to have become very seriously immersed in some particular business and is almost certain to have caught the point of view of that particular business. And it is very useful to his son to be taken out of that narrow circle, conducted to some high place where he may see the general map of the world and of the interests of mankind, and there shown how big the world is and how much of it his father may happen to have forgotten. It would be worth while for men, middle-aged and old, to detach them selves more frequently from the things that command their daily attention and to think of the sweeping tides of humanity.Needless to say, I personally do not agree that a sentiment such as "the use of a university is to make young gentlemen as unlike their fathers as possible" can be advanced without "the least disrespect for the fathers" even once, let alone often.
Woodrow Wilson on the Christian Men’s Association
Well, at least Woodrow Wilson thought character education happened via instruction in the disciplines, not vendor-produced character-ed "curricula" and the like.
I suppose that's something.
Friday, December 13, 2013
Eureka, part 2: why MOOCs don't work and flipped classrooms never will work
Eureka, part 1
So as I was saying, Ed and I were having lunch in the American Diner, somewhere in the vicinity of Nyack (if I am not mistaken) and we were talking about MOOCs, and I had a eureka moment re: why MOOCs don't work, and why flipped classrooms won't work, either.
The whole MOOC/flipped classroom extravaganza of lo these past 2 years------
Wait.
Has it been 2 years?
Should we date the commencement of MOOC fever to Bill Gates' anointment of Salman Khan as the new new thing?
[pause]
Two seconds on Google brings us to Bill Gates on the “golden era” of learning, thanks to massive open online courses and easy access to information, so I say Yes, blame Bill Gates. Because if it wasn't Bill Gates who launched us on the MOOCs-&-flips merry-go-round, it could have been. Pretty much wherever you see a really bad idea re: public education taking hold, you will find Bill Gates.
So I blame Bill.
Anyway, Ed and I got on the subject of MOOCs, and while I no longer recall our point of departure, we pretty quickly arrived at the simple fact that MOOCs (and flips) are fantastically boring.
The fantastic boringness of MOOCs is no secret, & pretty much everyone concedes the point (though for different reasons) but the question is: Why?
Why are MOOCs fantastically boring?
More to the point, why are MOOCs fantastically boring to me, a person who is perfectly happy, and not remotely bored, listening to a live lecture delivered inside a lecture hall?
I can prove it, too. Morningside's Summer School Institute, which I attended the summer before last, used a heavy-duty lecture format; we students sat for hours of lecture, hours on end. Lecture and Powerpoints.
It was great!
By the end of the two weeks I was exhausted and my brain was fried, but I wasn't bored (just the opposite), and, more importantly, I was still in the class. Everyone was. Which would not have been the case if we'd been taking the class via MOOC.
(For the record, the first week of the Summer School Institute is largely lecture; the second week is divided between lecture and student teaching in Morningside Academy.)
My point being: I have a very high tolerance for lecture; I have no problem showing up for, learning from, and enjoying live lectures delivered in bricks-and-mortar venues. Where MOOCs are concerned, I should be a natural.
So why can't I make it through more than 2 or 3 (usually 2) taped lectures of a MOOC?
Ed brought up movies.
When you go to the movies, he said, the screen is huge, the sound is deafening, all the lights are turned off, you can't talk to your friends, and you aren't allowed to turn your cell phone on. Plus a movie lasts only a couple of hours, then you never have to see it again unless there's a sequel that you really want to see, and you don't have to see that for at least a year.
And even at the movies, even with all the ploys and devices filmmakers and theater designers have developed to hold your attention, if the plot sags, your mind wanders.
MOOCs don't have any of those things, so good luck. The wonder of it all is not that the drop-out rate for MOOCs is catastrophic, but that anyone thought they were a good idea in the first place.
Ed continued.
TV, he said, had had to follow in the footsteps of movies. TVs are bigger, the sound is louder, the experience more immersive….
That's not really true, I said. It's definitely not true of sit coms. Sit coms are the exact same hokey, flat-lit, 3-camera affair they always were, with the laugh track telling you when to laugh, and they work. They always have.
That's when it hit me.
Part 3 t/k
Eureka
Eureka, part 2
Eureka, part 3
Eureka, part 4
Eureka, part 5
Flipping the Classroom: Hot, Hot, Hot
MOOCs grow the gap
The New York Times is surprised
In the world of MOOCs, 2+2 is never 4
World's funniest joke: humor depends on surprise
Dick Van Dyke on comedy
Philip Keller on the flipped classroom
If students could talk
Who wants flipped classrooms? (Salman Khan on liberating teachers)
True story
Are math & science lectures boring in a way humanities & social science lectures are not?
So as I was saying, Ed and I were having lunch in the American Diner, somewhere in the vicinity of Nyack (if I am not mistaken) and we were talking about MOOCs, and I had a eureka moment re: why MOOCs don't work, and why flipped classrooms won't work, either.
The whole MOOC/flipped classroom extravaganza of lo these past 2 years------
Wait.
Has it been 2 years?
Should we date the commencement of MOOC fever to Bill Gates' anointment of Salman Khan as the new new thing?
[pause]
Two seconds on Google brings us to Bill Gates on the “golden era” of learning, thanks to massive open online courses and easy access to information, so I say Yes, blame Bill Gates. Because if it wasn't Bill Gates who launched us on the MOOCs-&-flips merry-go-round, it could have been. Pretty much wherever you see a really bad idea re: public education taking hold, you will find Bill Gates.
So I blame Bill.
Anyway, Ed and I got on the subject of MOOCs, and while I no longer recall our point of departure, we pretty quickly arrived at the simple fact that MOOCs (and flips) are fantastically boring.
The fantastic boringness of MOOCs is no secret, & pretty much everyone concedes the point (though for different reasons) but the question is: Why?
Why are MOOCs fantastically boring?
More to the point, why are MOOCs fantastically boring to me, a person who is perfectly happy, and not remotely bored, listening to a live lecture delivered inside a lecture hall?
I can prove it, too. Morningside's Summer School Institute, which I attended the summer before last, used a heavy-duty lecture format; we students sat for hours of lecture, hours on end. Lecture and Powerpoints.
It was great!
By the end of the two weeks I was exhausted and my brain was fried, but I wasn't bored (just the opposite), and, more importantly, I was still in the class. Everyone was. Which would not have been the case if we'd been taking the class via MOOC.
(For the record, the first week of the Summer School Institute is largely lecture; the second week is divided between lecture and student teaching in Morningside Academy.)
My point being: I have a very high tolerance for lecture; I have no problem showing up for, learning from, and enjoying live lectures delivered in bricks-and-mortar venues. Where MOOCs are concerned, I should be a natural.
So why can't I make it through more than 2 or 3 (usually 2) taped lectures of a MOOC?
Ed brought up movies.
When you go to the movies, he said, the screen is huge, the sound is deafening, all the lights are turned off, you can't talk to your friends, and you aren't allowed to turn your cell phone on. Plus a movie lasts only a couple of hours, then you never have to see it again unless there's a sequel that you really want to see, and you don't have to see that for at least a year.
And even at the movies, even with all the ploys and devices filmmakers and theater designers have developed to hold your attention, if the plot sags, your mind wanders.
MOOCs don't have any of those things, so good luck. The wonder of it all is not that the drop-out rate for MOOCs is catastrophic, but that anyone thought they were a good idea in the first place.
Ed continued.
TV, he said, had had to follow in the footsteps of movies. TVs are bigger, the sound is louder, the experience more immersive….
That's not really true, I said. It's definitely not true of sit coms. Sit coms are the exact same hokey, flat-lit, 3-camera affair they always were, with the laugh track telling you when to laugh, and they work. They always have.
That's when it hit me.
Part 3 t/k
Eureka
Eureka, part 2
Eureka, part 3
Eureka, part 4
Eureka, part 5
Flipping the Classroom: Hot, Hot, Hot
MOOCs grow the gap
The New York Times is surprised
In the world of MOOCs, 2+2 is never 4
World's funniest joke: humor depends on surprise
Dick Van Dyke on comedy
Philip Keller on the flipped classroom
If students could talk
Who wants flipped classrooms? (Salman Khan on liberating teachers)
True story
Are math & science lectures boring in a way humanities & social science lectures are not?
Little Drummer Boy
I spent the first 5 seconds of this video thinking This is ridiculous, and, about 5 seconds after that, This is fabulous!
Little Drummer Boy Pentatonix
You have to watch the video, and the singers' faces.
Little Drummer Boy Pentatonix
You have to watch the video, and the singers' faces.
Thursday, December 12, 2013
Eureka
This afternoon, while Ed and I were having lunch in the American Diner over in …. Nyack?
Hmm.
I have no idea what town the American Diner is in.
Retake.
This afternoon, while Ed and I were having lunch in the American Diner, it came to me.
Why MOOCs don't work, and why flipped classrooms aren't going to work, either.
I've got it.
Optimal arousal levels.
That's the problem.
As usual, the world of athletics is way ahead of the world of everything else.
More anon.
Eureka
Eureka, part 2
Eureka, part 3
Eureka, part 4
Eureka, part 5
Flipping the Classroom: Hot, Hot, Hot
MOOCs grow the gap
The New York Times is surprised
In the world of MOOCs, 2+2 is never 4
World's funniest joke: humor depends on surprise
Dick Van Dyke on comedy
Philip Keller on the flipped classroom
If students could talk
Who wants flipped classrooms? (Salman Khan on liberating teachers)
True story
Are math & science lectures boring in a way humanities & social science lectures are not?
Hmm.
I have no idea what town the American Diner is in.
Retake.
This afternoon, while Ed and I were having lunch in the American Diner, it came to me.
Why MOOCs don't work, and why flipped classrooms aren't going to work, either.
I've got it.
Optimal arousal levels.
That's the problem.
As usual, the world of athletics is way ahead of the world of everything else.
More anon.
Eureka
Eureka, part 2
Eureka, part 3
Eureka, part 4
Eureka, part 5
Flipping the Classroom: Hot, Hot, Hot
MOOCs grow the gap
The New York Times is surprised
In the world of MOOCs, 2+2 is never 4
World's funniest joke: humor depends on surprise
Dick Van Dyke on comedy
Philip Keller on the flipped classroom
If students could talk
Who wants flipped classrooms? (Salman Khan on liberating teachers)
True story
Are math & science lectures boring in a way humanities & social science lectures are not?
MOOCs grow the gap
This study contributes to a growing body of research on academic achievement of students in online courses. In a recent meta-analysis of studies comparing online to inperson courses (2009), the U.S. Department of Education found that there was no significant difference between student achievement in online and traditional courses, although a small increase was noted for hybrid courses that combined the two methods. However, when these studies were further analyzed by at-risk student population demographics lower achievement was found in online courses (Jaggars & Bailey, 2010). This finding has been recently expanded by Xu and Jaggars (2013) in a study that investigated how different types of students—including groups that share characteristics found, particularly, among students from AOLE’s partner high school—perform in online learning courses. Using course grade and course completion as dependent variables, Xu and Jaggars found that while all students did less well in online courses, some student groups were more negatively affected from taking courses in this mode. These students were males, younger students, students with lower levels academic skills, and African American students. [emphasis added] The study also found that the negative impact of online learning was exacerbated when groups of students comprised of those who adapt least well to online learning study together. It should be noted that the study, based on research conducted across Washington State on 500,000 online and face-to-face course enrollments (and 41,000 students), did not distinguish between different types of online learning environments, faculty preparation, or support services available to students. The Xu and Jaggars study confirms prior findings in previous smaller studies, which also found that students from at-risk demographic groups and introductory courses had lower performance in online courses compared to other students, thereby exacerbating the well-documented achievement gap in higher education (Kaupp, 2012; Xiu & Smith, 2011, Terenzini & Pascarella, 1998).
PRELIMINARY SUMMARY
SJSU+ AUGMENTED ONLINE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT
PILOT PROJECT
September 2013
Prepared for Principal Investigator: Elaine D. Collins, Ph.D
Eureka
Eureka, part 2
Eureka, part 3
Eureka, part 4
Eureka, part 5
Flipping the Classroom: Hot, Hot, Hot
MOOCs grow the gap
The New York Times is surprised
In the world of MOOCs, 2+2 is never 4
World's funniest joke: humor depends on surprise
Dick Van Dyke on comedy
Philip Keller on the flipped classroom
If students could talk
Who wants flipped classrooms? (Salman Khan on liberating teachers)
True story
Are math & science lectures boring in a way humanities & social science lectures are not?
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
In the world of MOOCs, 2 + 2 is never 4
The statistical model found that measures of student effort trump all other variables tested for their relationships to student success, including demographic descriptions of the students, course subject matter and student use of support services. The clearest predictor of passing a course is the number of problem sets a student submitted. The relationship between completion of problem sets and success is not linear; rather the positive effect increases dramatically after a certain baseline of effort has been made. Video Time, another measure of effort, was also found to have a strong positive relationship with passing, particularly for Stat 95 students. The report graphs these and other relationships between variables examined by the logistic-regression models and pass/fail.Let's reprise.
While the regression analysis did not find a positive relationship between use of online support and positive outcomes, this should not be interpreted to mean that online support cannot increase student engagement and success. As students, Udacity service providers and faculty members explained, several factors complicated students’ ability to fully use the support services, including their limited online experience, their lack of awareness that these services were available and the difficulties they experienced interacting with some aspects of the online platform. It is thus the advice of the research team that additional investigations be conducted into the role that online and other support can play in the delivery of AOLE courses once the initial technical and other complications have been addressed.
Conclusion: The low pass rates in all courses should be considered in light of the fact that the project specifically targeted at-risk populations, including students who had failed Math 6L before Spring 2013 and groups demonstrated by other research to be less likely to succeed in an online environment. Previous studies (see Section 1) have found that these students do less well in online than in face-to-face courses. Further, student groups in at least one major study (Jaggars and Xu, 2013) who were found to experience the greatest negative effect from taking courses online share many of the characteristics found among the AOLE partner high school students in particular, a group with very low pass rates in Spring 2013.
Overall, much was learned during and from the first iteration of AOLE and improvements are already in progress in the second AOLE iteration. Perhaps most importantly, the faculty members who taught these courses, although they had to contend with major difficulties along the way, believe that the content that has been developed has tremendous potential to advance students’ critical thinking and problem solving abilities. One faculty member summed it up this way: "Udacity has brought to the table ways to make the courses more inquiry-based and added real life context."
PRELIMINARY SUMMARY SJSU+ AUGMENTED ONLINE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT PILOT PROJECT September 2013
- The clearest predictor of success in the course was the number of problem sets students completed. In other words, practice.
- The online mentors, aka teachers-slash-tutors, didn't help. But they might have helped if students had a) had lots of internet experience (practice) & thus could figure out how to get to the mentors; b) known the online mentors existed; and c) been able to get the MOOC site to work.
- "Previous research" had found that weak students do better in face-to-face courses, so….SJSU opted to run a MOOC and fill it with weak students.
- "Most importantly," the teachers who taught the MOOCs think the "content" has "tremendous potential to advance students’ critical thinking and problem solving abilities."
A person who lives in the world where two plus two equals four would be doing something else.
Eureka
Eureka, part 2
Eureka, part 3
Eureka, part 4
Eureka, part 5
Flipping the Classroom: Hot, Hot, Hot
MOOCs grow the gap
The New York Times is surprised
In the world of MOOCs, 2+2 is never 4
World's funniest joke: humor depends on surprise
Dick Van Dyke on comedy
Philip Keller on the flipped classroom
If students could talk
Who wants flipped classrooms? (Salman Khan on liberating teachers)
True story
Are math & science lectures boring in a way humanities & social science lectures are not?
The New York Times is surprised
Two years after a Stanford professor drew 160,000 students from around the globe to a free online course on artificial intelligence, starting what was widely viewed as a revolution in higher education, early results for such large-scale courses are disappointing, forcing a rethinking of how college instruction can best use the Internet.Who could have predicted the coming of a MOOC rethink? Apart from every single person reading, writing, & commenting on this blog, who?
After Setbacks, Online Courses Are Rethought by Tamar Lewin December 10, 2013
I ask you.
And perhaps the most publicized MOOC experiment, at San Jose State University, has turned into a flop. It was a partnership announced with great fanfare at a January news conference featuring Gov. Jerry Brown of California, a strong backer of online education. San Jose State and Udacity, a Silicon Valley company co-founded by a Stanford artificial-intelligence professor, Sebastian Thrun, would work together to offer three low-cost online introductory courses for college credit.Meanwhile I'm pretty sure I heard our curriculum director say, at the last board meeting, that our classrooms have been flipped.
Mr. Thrun, who had been unhappy with the low completion rates in free MOOCs, hoped to increase them by hiring online mentors to help students stick with the classes. And the university, in the heart of Silicon Valley, hoped to show its leadership in online learning, and to reach more students.
But the pilot classes, of about 100 people each, failed. Despite access to the Udacity mentors, the online students last spring — including many from a charter high school in Oakland — did worse than those who took the classes on campus. In the algebra class, fewer than a quarter of the students — and only 12 percent of the high school students — earned a passing grade.
One of the board members said, "What's that?"
Eureka
Eureka, part 2
Eureka, part 3
Eureka, part 4
Eureka, part 5
Flipping the Classroom: Hot, Hot, Hot
MOOCs grow the gap
The New York Times is surprised
In the world of MOOCs, 2+2 is never 4
World's funniest joke: humor depends on surprise
Dick Van Dyke on comedy
Philip Keller on the flipped classroom
If students could talk
Friday, December 6, 2013
Mission creep
Sharon Necaise, a public school educator at West Feliciana High School, in St. Francisville, La., told FoxNews.com her experience with Common Core has been positive.
"This is the thing, [Common Core] brings a critical thinking and cognitive awareness component that will ensure our students and children are not robots," Nercaise said.
Teachers complain Common Core-linked lessons little more than scripts to read
By Perry ChiaramontePublished December 05, 2013 FoxNews.com
AP Test $$$
Having written a check for $445 this morning to cover the cost of the 5 AP tests my son will take in May, I figure I'm allowed to gripe a little bit. I came close to telling him not to bother taking the tests. They will have NO influence on whether he gets into one college or another. However, his school won't give him the weighted value for the course unless he can get at least a '3' on each test. Never mind that all of his grades are A's. Does anyone know of students who do not bother to take the tests? I think the cost is too high and parents should not have to pay for them 6 months ahead of time. I feel like I'm at the car dealership for service. I just write the check.
Thursday, December 5, 2013
Math scores & loss aversion
Enhancing the Efficacy of Teacher Incentives
Loss-aversion incentives increased math test scores between 0.2 and 0.4 standard deviations
In recent years, a number of U.S. states and school districts have implemented teacher financial-incentive plans, also known as merit pay, with the goal of increasing student achievement. Some past studies have shown that such reform attempts, which pay teachers bonuses after their students hit certain goals, have had limited effects on student achievement.
In Enhancing the Efficacy of Teacher Incentives Through Loss Aversion: A Field Experiment (NBER Working Paper No. 18237), co-authors Ronald Fryer, Jr., Steven Levitt, John List, and Sally Sadoff find that using an alternative "loss aversion" incentive -- with teachers being paid bonuses in advance and asked to give money back if students don't achieve specific results -- significantly improves student achievement. Their results also suggest that loss-aversion incentives might be used in the corporate world in the pursuit of profits.
Although earlier studies have confirmed a correlation between teacher quality and student achievement, the challenge to date has been identifying quality teachers and providing proper incentives for all teachers to successfully strive for improved and lasting student achievement. At least ten states and numerous school districts in the United States have adopted programs that reward teachers with extra pay after students achieve certain goals on tests or report cards, but these "traditional" incentive programs generally have not had large effects on long-term student performance.
Fryer and his co-authors conduct a field experiment of teacher incentives using the concept of loss aversion -- that is, by framing incentives as losses rather than gains. They worked with schools in Chicago Heights, Illinois, which is located thirty miles south of Chicago and has nine K-8 schools with a total of about 3,200 students, during the 2010-11 school year. Chicago Heights' schools are made up of primarily low-income minority students who struggle with low achievement rates.'
In cooperation with school administrators and the teachers' union, the authors randomly selected 150 volunteer teachers and divided them into two main categories. The "gain" group was subject to traditional merit-pay incentives distributed after student achievement levels were determined and met; the "loss" group was subject to loss-aversion incentives that gave bonuses in advance, with the stipulation that money would be returned by teachers if students didn't hit stipulated test goals at the end of the school year. With a pool of $632,960 to distribute in incentive payments, the authors further subdivided the "gain" and "loss" groups in order to measure individual-based and team-based teacher incentives.
Using benchmarks from prior student test scores and final end-of-school-year ThinkLink Predictive Assessment test results, the authors find that loss-aversion incentives increased math test scores between 0.2 and 0.4 standard deviations, or the equivalent of increasing teacher quality by more than one standard deviation. The traditional "gain" incentives yielded "smaller and statistically insignificant results." Similar patterns were found in reading test scores -- and in both individual-based and team-based teacher incentive approaches. The authors did not identify any other factors, such as student absenteeism or outright cheating in test scores, which could explain the differences in achievement results.
--Jay Fitzgerald
Saturday, November 23, 2013
Anonymous weighs in
Here's a weird thought to ponder: across the land, future teachers are being taught that direct instruction is bad, that they should be the guide on the side, that the discover method is the best way to educate...but exactly HOW are they being taught this? Does a guide on the side help them to discover the enduring understanding that this is the best way to teach? I bet not. I bet they are being directly instructed not to directly instruct. Hmm...
The reason this came to mind is that I was remembering a curriculum writing workshop in which I was instructed (and it felt direct to me) that if a question has a single correct answer then it is not an essential question.
What has happened is that the understanding-by-design crowd has claimed the term "essential question" as their own special buzzword. I guess the common core crowd is using it too.
Tom Loveless on the algebra 2 problem
From Algebra II and The Declining Significance of Coursetaking:
...taking and successfully completing an Algebra II course, which once certified high school students’ mastery of advanced topics in algebra and solid preparation for college-level mathematics, no longer means what it once did. The credentialing integrity of Algebra II has weakened.
The declining significance of successfully completing Algebra II highlights a dilemma. Pushing students to take more advanced coursework has been a mainstay of American school reform for several decades. That prescription has worked in boosting enrollments. In 1986, less than half of all 17 year-olds (44%) had completed Algebra II, and for Black and Hispanic students, the rate was less than a third. Completing Algebra II is now commonplace. In 2012, about three-fourths of students completed Algebra II, and the race/ethnicity gaps associated with taking the course have narrowed significantly. (All NAEP data below are from the NAEP data explorer.)
Getting more students to take higher level math courses may be a hollow victory. It has not coincided with students learning more math.
Worse than you think, non-Common Core edition
After a 3-year hiatus, I have returned to my district's school board meetings. I am, once again, a regular.
It's been somewhat fun.
It's also been interesting in that I discovered, on my first night 'back,' that I had missed the board. Missed as in missed members of the board as people for whom I feel a great deal of affection. I was happy to see them again, after so long away.
Crazy!
I've spent years attempting to reform my district, and being frustrated by the administration and by whoever was currently serving on the board who wasn't someone I helped elect.
And Chris's middle school years were harrowing.
But Chris's middle school years are well behind us now, and come to find out, my essential emotion today, where board members are concerned, is: affection. I am fond of our school our school board members, collectively and individually.
I seem to feel the same way about our administrators. (That's really weird.)
Ed says I have become the loyal opposition.
Anyway, it's somewhat fun to be back.
The somewhat comes from the content of board meetings, which is never what I want. Or, rather, it's (sometimes) in the vicinity of what I want, but it's not what I actually want.
Plus, there are surprises.
Last Tuesday night's surprise was the revelation that the district does not have an early reading curriculum.
At all.
I had been assuming we had a bad one. Last I checked we have something like 18% of kids going into 'Tier 2' intervention, and I'm pretty sure that number would be 10% with a good reading curriculum. (I hope palisadesk is around to weigh in.)
So I had just naturally been assuming that we have a really bad early reading curriculum the same way we had a really bad math curriculum in K-5 and a really bad reading curriculum in the middle school.
But no.
We don't have any early reading curriculum at all.
The funny (ha-ha) thing about this is that back when Ed and I first moved to town we became dimly aware of what seemed to be chronic conflicts at the board level re: not enough textbooks to go around. Various classes didn't have enough textbooks, and somehow enough textbooks were never bought or budgeted for or who knows what, and teachers were getting in trouble for spilling the beans to parents about the not-enough-textbooks situation, until finally the then-board president took matters in his own hands and decreed that enough textbooks be ordered at once and distributed to students. That's the story I heard, at any rate.
So it's path dependency.
We have always been a district with a not-enough-textbooks problem, and we are evolving into a district with no textbooks at all.
I'm sure regular attendance at board meetings will reverse that trend.
It's been somewhat fun.
It's also been interesting in that I discovered, on my first night 'back,' that I had missed the board. Missed as in missed members of the board as people for whom I feel a great deal of affection. I was happy to see them again, after so long away.
Crazy!
I've spent years attempting to reform my district, and being frustrated by the administration and by whoever was currently serving on the board who wasn't someone I helped elect.
And Chris's middle school years were harrowing.
But Chris's middle school years are well behind us now, and come to find out, my essential emotion today, where board members are concerned, is: affection. I am fond of our school our school board members, collectively and individually.
I seem to feel the same way about our administrators. (That's really weird.)
Ed says I have become the loyal opposition.
Anyway, it's somewhat fun to be back.
The somewhat comes from the content of board meetings, which is never what I want. Or, rather, it's (sometimes) in the vicinity of what I want, but it's not what I actually want.
Plus, there are surprises.
Last Tuesday night's surprise was the revelation that the district does not have an early reading curriculum.
At all.
I had been assuming we had a bad one. Last I checked we have something like 18% of kids going into 'Tier 2' intervention, and I'm pretty sure that number would be 10% with a good reading curriculum. (I hope palisadesk is around to weigh in.)
So I had just naturally been assuming that we have a really bad early reading curriculum the same way we had a really bad math curriculum in K-5 and a really bad reading curriculum in the middle school.
But no.
We don't have any early reading curriculum at all.
The funny (ha-ha) thing about this is that back when Ed and I first moved to town we became dimly aware of what seemed to be chronic conflicts at the board level re: not enough textbooks to go around. Various classes didn't have enough textbooks, and somehow enough textbooks were never bought or budgeted for or who knows what, and teachers were getting in trouble for spilling the beans to parents about the not-enough-textbooks situation, until finally the then-board president took matters in his own hands and decreed that enough textbooks be ordered at once and distributed to students. That's the story I heard, at any rate.
So it's path dependency.
We have always been a district with a not-enough-textbooks problem, and we are evolving into a district with no textbooks at all.
I'm sure regular attendance at board meetings will reverse that trend.
Friday, November 22, 2013
Resources for the ACT test?
My daughter is a junior and in the middle of the test taking year. I went back through all the posts and gathered the resources on the SAT. Does anyone have a similar set of resources for the ACT test?
Monday, November 18, 2013
Wrecking rigorous math in high school, non Common Core edition
Lots of folks are up in arms about the "lowered" standards in high school, courtesy of Common Core. Meanwhile STEM preparation is degrading here, no CC necessary.
Let's recap:
In 2007, MN adopted "better, more rigorous!" standards that they claimed were the tops in the nation, matching MA and CA. In these, all 8th graders were required to take Algebra through the algebra of the line. This would now be called "algebra 1", and algebra 1 was no longer a credit bearing course in high school. Also in these changes, all high schoolers were required to take algebra 2 before graduation. The standards defining algebra 2 covered only those subjects expected to be
learned to mastery. These standards did not include trigonometry nor logarithms nor other kinds of mathematics.
In 2011, the standards were rolled in. The state did not change the teacher credentialing requirements for 8th grade math teachers.
The new Algebra 1 class looked like old Algebra 1 to parents. Except it's only 1/2 of the algebra they knew. And Algebra 2 is about 1/2 of the algebra 2 they knew. But there's no way to be half a year ahead, though, for most schools, and therefore, for kids. So the new alg 1 is the only alg 1, and the only alg 2 is the rest of the old alg 1 and 1/2 of old alg 2.
Content including trig, logs, complicated factoring, circular functions, all of this is now in pre calc.
Limits, sequences and series, graphing of high order functions, de Moivre's theorem, etc. is now in most APcalc classes.
Now, schools cheat this by offering a year for AP calc AB, they claim, and a year for AP calc BC.
But this is a sham. A 5 of the AB test is mathematically no less than a 4 on the the BC, because the BC test simply does not offer that much more material than a competent calculus course would already have offered. While it does offer new topics, it most definitely does not offer multivariate calc, which is the 2nd term of calc in any semester-based engineering or STEM calculus sequence, and the third term at any quarter based university calc sequence.
So...to recap: we in MN, without CC, teach algebra earlier now, and as a result, kids leave no better off where they did before in terms of knowledge, but a year behind the titles of the courses they are taking. They and their parents are misled about what they know and what they have been taught when.
For the majority, they basically take pre calc, same as always. But for the honors kids who used to get a real AP course that really was the equivalent of the first semester of calculus, they are screwed. They no longer get that, or they only do by taking finding some school supposedly giving them alg 2 in 8th grade--who is qualified for that???? and then, they still only get as far as 1 term of college calc. Likely they waste a year instead of learning something for real.
This means without 2 years of supposed hs calc, they are not ready for calc based physics in college.
This can't be blamed on Common Core. This can't be blamed on ed schools, either.
This is the Cargo Cult of education (a phrase I coined here UPDATE! below) and the Cargo Cult of politics. We walk around, mimicking what real people once did, pretending that coconut headphones and a guy waving sheets as if they are semaphores on the tarmac will bring back the cargo planes.
The legislature pretended that decreeing students do something earlier was the same as doing it well.
The legislature pretended decreeing everyone take algebra 2 would make them capable of it.
The Dept of Ed pretended to concur and changed the content of the standard.
The publishers pretended to concur and changed the content of the books.
The schools pretended to concur and changed the content of the courses.
The teachers pretended to concur and gave everyone high grades.
The parents and students ...well? some pretend their schools are still great. Some are duped until college. And even then, most just want someone else to pay for the student loans they had to take for remediation, not yet angry about the remediation.
But the kids who used to be ready for an engineering degree program are no longer ready, and are losing ground compared to their foreign counterparts.
Until people admit reality we will keep playing these games.
From the MN dept of ed Math 2007 standards FAQ
"Some algebra II material is introductory in nature and lays the foundation for future courses. Students are not expected to master such material. For example, logarithms are usually introduced in algebra II, but mastery of the fundamentals of logarithms is not expected until precalculus or college algebra. For this reason, logarithms are not mentioned in the 9-11th grade standards and benchmarks."
UPDATE: E. D. Hirsch first used the phrase Cargo Cult here http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/7262 to refer to the state of educational research. My use of it was independent of this, and somewhat different.
Let's recap:
In 2007, MN adopted "better, more rigorous!" standards that they claimed were the tops in the nation, matching MA and CA. In these, all 8th graders were required to take Algebra through the algebra of the line. This would now be called "algebra 1", and algebra 1 was no longer a credit bearing course in high school. Also in these changes, all high schoolers were required to take algebra 2 before graduation. The standards defining algebra 2 covered only those subjects expected to be
learned to mastery. These standards did not include trigonometry nor logarithms nor other kinds of mathematics.
In 2011, the standards were rolled in. The state did not change the teacher credentialing requirements for 8th grade math teachers.
The new Algebra 1 class looked like old Algebra 1 to parents. Except it's only 1/2 of the algebra they knew. And Algebra 2 is about 1/2 of the algebra 2 they knew. But there's no way to be half a year ahead, though, for most schools, and therefore, for kids. So the new alg 1 is the only alg 1, and the only alg 2 is the rest of the old alg 1 and 1/2 of old alg 2.
Content including trig, logs, complicated factoring, circular functions, all of this is now in pre calc.
Limits, sequences and series, graphing of high order functions, de Moivre's theorem, etc. is now in most APcalc classes.
Now, schools cheat this by offering a year for AP calc AB, they claim, and a year for AP calc BC.
But this is a sham. A 5 of the AB test is mathematically no less than a 4 on the the BC, because the BC test simply does not offer that much more material than a competent calculus course would already have offered. While it does offer new topics, it most definitely does not offer multivariate calc, which is the 2nd term of calc in any semester-based engineering or STEM calculus sequence, and the third term at any quarter based university calc sequence.
So...to recap: we in MN, without CC, teach algebra earlier now, and as a result, kids leave no better off where they did before in terms of knowledge, but a year behind the titles of the courses they are taking. They and their parents are misled about what they know and what they have been taught when.
For the majority, they basically take pre calc, same as always. But for the honors kids who used to get a real AP course that really was the equivalent of the first semester of calculus, they are screwed. They no longer get that, or they only do by taking finding some school supposedly giving them alg 2 in 8th grade--who is qualified for that???? and then, they still only get as far as 1 term of college calc. Likely they waste a year instead of learning something for real.
This means without 2 years of supposed hs calc, they are not ready for calc based physics in college.
This can't be blamed on Common Core. This can't be blamed on ed schools, either.
This is the Cargo Cult of education (a phrase I coined here UPDATE! below) and the Cargo Cult of politics. We walk around, mimicking what real people once did, pretending that coconut headphones and a guy waving sheets as if they are semaphores on the tarmac will bring back the cargo planes.
The legislature pretended that decreeing students do something earlier was the same as doing it well.
The legislature pretended decreeing everyone take algebra 2 would make them capable of it.
The Dept of Ed pretended to concur and changed the content of the standard.
The publishers pretended to concur and changed the content of the books.
The schools pretended to concur and changed the content of the courses.
The teachers pretended to concur and gave everyone high grades.
The parents and students ...well? some pretend their schools are still great. Some are duped until college. And even then, most just want someone else to pay for the student loans they had to take for remediation, not yet angry about the remediation.
But the kids who used to be ready for an engineering degree program are no longer ready, and are losing ground compared to their foreign counterparts.
Until people admit reality we will keep playing these games.
From the MN dept of ed Math 2007 standards FAQ
"Some algebra II material is introductory in nature and lays the foundation for future courses. Students are not expected to master such material. For example, logarithms are usually introduced in algebra II, but mastery of the fundamentals of logarithms is not expected until precalculus or college algebra. For this reason, logarithms are not mentioned in the 9-11th grade standards and benchmarks."
UPDATE: E. D. Hirsch first used the phrase Cargo Cult here http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/7262 to refer to the state of educational research. My use of it was independent of this, and somewhat different.
Saturday, November 9, 2013
Help desk, Common Core edition
Cruising Common Core materials (there seem to be lots on Prezi), I find this (slide title: "Two Types of Essential Questions: Overarching and Topical"):
Isn't there one right answer to "how many ways can we achieve the sum of 23"?
Isn't the answer: "There are an infinite number of ways to achieve the sum of 23"?
Another thing: would this question be asked, in this way, in combinatorics? (In the time I've spent trying to learn combinatorics, I haven't encountered a question with more than one right answer. Nor did I encounter a question with an answer of infinity.)
(And how is this question "topical"?)
I am watching in amazement as Common Core rolls across the land.
It's as if every constructivist in the country has suddenly been handed a lifetime prescription for anabolic steroids.
All those years of No Child Left Behind and Adequate Yearly Progress must have created a massive pent-up desire in the breasts of America's educators to conduct mini-lessons and ask math questions with no right answer.
Isn't there one right answer to "how many ways can we achieve the sum of 23"?
Isn't the answer: "There are an infinite number of ways to achieve the sum of 23"?
Another thing: would this question be asked, in this way, in combinatorics? (In the time I've spent trying to learn combinatorics, I haven't encountered a question with more than one right answer. Nor did I encounter a question with an answer of infinity.)
(And how is this question "topical"?)
I am watching in amazement as Common Core rolls across the land.
It's as if every constructivist in the country has suddenly been handed a lifetime prescription for anabolic steroids.
All those years of No Child Left Behind and Adequate Yearly Progress must have created a massive pent-up desire in the breasts of America's educators to conduct mini-lessons and ask math questions with no right answer.
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